


Ten Lives

by mizufallsfromkumo



Category: Common Law
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Child Murder, F/F, F/M, Genderbending, M/M, Multiple Lives, Multiple Time Periods, Murder, Probably a bunch of other stuff I don't know how to tag, Reincarnation, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizufallsfromkumo/pseuds/mizufallsfromkumo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve lived ten lives, and Wes is the only one who’s cursed to remember them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Lives

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a fic cause I was board and wanted to procrastinate doing things I need. Shooting the Moon should have a new chapter by next week I promise...

They’ve lived ten lives, and Wes is the only one who’s cursed to remember them all.  He doesn’t know why or how, or even who would do such a thing, but he knows it’s a curse.  He’ll look at Travis and see how unburdened he is, and he’ll remember the ten lives.  The ten different lives they’ve had, in some cases the different bodies and names, the different times, different circumstances and people that surrounded them, all the tragedy, pain, and happiness within them.  He’ll curse Travis for his luck, while at the same time thanking God he was spared the knowledge of it all.

\----  ----  ----

1

\--

The first life Wes remembers dates back to the early 1700s.  His father owned a plantation somewhere near Virginia and the Carolinas.  It was large and vast, and what they grew Wes doesn’t remember, but they were rich.  They had slaves, as was custom of the time.  Wes didn’t really agree, and as much as his parents seemed to feed him the idea that it was reasonably an okay thing, there was always something in his head that just refused to accept it completely.

He met Travis when he was seventeen.  The man was a slave they owned, but he was force to be reckoned with regardless.  He liked to challenge people, which didn’t always turn out well for him.  Wes however didn’t mind at all, mainly because Travis shattered everything Wes’ parents told him.  Travis was smart and sharp, and he was quick on his feet.  They struck up friendship quickly, and Wes didn’t care if what anyone thought of it, he was a rebellious teenager like that. 

Travis would sneak Wes into where he lived and introduce him to the people he worked with; they were all a bit shy at first.  However, eventually they warmed up to Wes because of his kindness.  For the most part though, Travis and him would just find placed to meet in private.  They would rant about their lives, and generally just find an escape from everything in each other.  Maybe they fell in love a bit, Wes knew he did, but he didn’t act on it, he knew how that was viewed in society.

For a while everything was good, but then someone found them meeting on the edge of Wes’ family’s property.   They thought one thing that was really another.   They went after Travis and Wes tried to intervene, but failed.  Travis died there and Wes woke up three days later in his bed with a fever and pain.  He died two days later from it.

\----  ----  ----

2

\--

In Wes’ second life he learned he should tell anyone.  When the memories of his first life started coming though he didn’t know what to think.  At first they were dreamlike, but a part of him knew it was real.  It was his life, and he was living again.  It sort of ruined the religion his family was shoving down his throat when he started to question it. 

Over time his mother grew frustrated and questioned his doubts at dinner one evening.  He told everyone.  How he lived before, about a decade before, and he had friends and family.  He told them he remembered it all, he had a good friends Travis that he cherished.  He told them he died and was born again.  His mother slapped him and called him a devil child.

His father took him to the parish, and he told the preacher the same thing when he asked.  The man tied him down and tried to expel a demon or something.  Nothing worked, because Wes always remembered when it was done, and he always told him did, with stronger details coming through at the same time.  So his father took him to the river and held him down till he drowned.

Wes never met Travis in that life.

\----  ----  ----

3

\--

In their third life, Wes lived up in Boston, and went by the name Wyeth.  He was the daughter of tavern owner and a Son of Liberty.  It was a bit odd when his memories from the life before hit her, remembering she had once been male.   Yet it was a new life and she couldn’t do anything about it seemed.  She lived a rather simple life, helping her father and brothers in the tavern when they need it.  That was of course, if one ignored all the secret plotting and passing of manifestos that went around.

She was working in the back, shoveling some stew into bowls for some orders placed, one evening, when someone barged into their back door.  She whipped around in shock at the sound, not really sure what to expect, the British soldiers seemed to be doing what they wanted those day.  However the sight that greeted her eyes caused her to drop the bowl in her hand.  There in front of her was Travis, the slave from her first life, like nothing ever happened to him.  She stared at him in shock, and he told her not to scream.  She sort of numbly nodded as he seemed to start explaining his reasoning, before noticing the blood coming from his chest. 

In a matter of seconds she hurried to him, pulling him and closing the door.  She hushed him sharply, and placing him in the corner with a cloth to just soak up the blood.  After that she hurried to get her father, and he came and took Travis up to their home.  Her father made her brothers take over for the night, and called her up to help tend to Travis.

Travis didn’t make it, but she never left his side the few days he was alive.  He was talkative, but it was all nonsense and flattery in his fading life.  She cried for days when he passed.  She had fallen in love with him again in a matter of days, and she never got over him.  Not even when childbirth took her away eight years later.

\----  ----  ----

4

\--

In the fourth life, Wes learned Travis didn’t remember their lives.  Wes’ family was broke in his fourth life, his father wasn’t good with money, honestly it was amazing they kept afloat.  Wes worked in a factory when he got old enough, and that was he’s life.  He met Travis again when he was fourteen.  Travis was fifteen, he lived on the streets, an orphan no one wanted. 

Wes was floored when he saw him again, and for some reason he just knew it was him again, like their souls were just destined to keep meeting.  However, Travis was thought Wes was crazy from all the smoke and exhaustion, and Wes was shocked.  He asked if Travis remembered him, but the other boy just informed him they never meet before, _ever_.  Yet that didn’t stop Travis from meeting up with him on his walk home and trying to get any spare change he could from Wes in the few years that followed.  Sometimes Wes would take pity, other times they were in the same boat.

One day Wes started coughing up blood, and collapsed at work.  Within a week he was dead, and he had no clue what happened to Travis after that.

\----  ----  ----

5

\--

Wes was the son of a plantation owner in Gerogia, and Travis was slave by the name of Tamar.  Tamar was a slave girl who worked in the kitchens and around the household.  Wes didn’t really meet her till he was older, at least in his mid-twenties.  He knew it was Travis the moment he saw her, he didn’t know why but he did.  She was a pretty thing, lighter skin tone than others, bright eyes, and a sort of gentleness to her. 

He was drawn to her, and vice-versa.  He remembered smiling so brightly when she told him before he kissed her for all she was worth, despite an engagement hanging in the balance.  It wasn’t long before they started sleeping together, and it was good.  No one said anything about it.  After all he was the owner’s son; he could do what he wished with their property.  The only one who said anything was his mother, who dropped a comment about his finance, but Wes waved her off.

It wasn’t long before Tamar told him she was pregnant, which made him beyond happy.  Months later, she gave birth to a son, only to have him died two months later.   It destroyed her, and Wes as well.  She disappeared ten months later, and Wes kicked back something poisonous, and left the estate to one of his cousins.

\----  ----  ----

6

\--

The next life, Wes was a female again, this time her name was Wendy.  She was a farmer’s daughter out of Pennsylvania.  He two older brothers and father went to fight in the war with the Confederates, leaving her mother and two younger sisters behind.  She wanted to go as well, her family could use the pay, and she wanted to fight, not to mention there was something that told her to go as well.

She cut her hair short, bound her small breasts, and left in the middle of the night to go enlist in the Union.  It didn’t take much, and before she knew it she was being sent off to fight.  She struggled a bit at first, but eventually she found her footing.   After a while she bumped into Travis, who in that life was a woman from the New York area named Tracey.

At first, Wendy didn’t know that Tracey was a woman, for the most part everyone was called by their last name.  But then she accidently walked in on Tracey adjusting her bindings of her own, and the truth came out.  Wendy swore she wouldn’t tell, revealing her own secret to Tracey.  After that the two were always together.  Adjusting bindings, tending to minor wounds, cutting hair, sharing food and ammo, telling secrets, dancing, and stealing kisses (Tracey was bold).  Just generally helping each other get through it all. 

But that all ended in a battle field in South Carolina.  Wendy got shot in the leg, and Tracey tried to get them out, but they were corner by confederate soldiers.  They refused to surrender and went down fighting.  They died side by side.

\----  ----  ----

7

\--

Travis and Wes basically grew up together in their seventh life.  Travis left on the church door, and Wes’ parents died from illness and he was sent to the same orphanage as Travis.  The two got along right away.  Travis was older and he looked out for Wes, who was quiet and closed off.  However, Travis and him got in trouble, more than could be excused.  When they were sixteen the orphanage kicked them out on the streets.  They didn’t care though, Wes collected his little inheritance and they went West. 

The west was wild and uncontrollable.  It wasn’t long till Travis and Wes started having fun and getting into trouble.  Like wanted criminal sort of trouble.  They robbed banks and trains, killed a few people who got their way, but no one innocent.  It was fun and dangerous, and a thrill Wes needed to forget he lost Travis five times before. 

At some point their affections for each other shown through.   Running around the untamed West with someone can do that to people.  It was nice to have Travis hold him close and kiss him lightly when they hardly escaped with their lives.

It all ended though when a sheriff put a hole in Travis he head.  Wes was hung a week later.

\----  ----  ----

8

\--

Prohibition was a bitch, but speak-easers were a god-sent.  If there was one thing Wes needed after starting an eighth life, it was alcohol.  A lot of alcohol, and the government wasn’t going to stop him from getting it, he didn’t care if it was illegal.

Wes met Travis in a speak-easy in that life time.  Travis was a member of the gang that helped run it.  Apparently Travis had been watching Wes for a while, feeling there was something familiar about him that he couldn’t place.  Wes didn’t say anything, because he had learned a long time ago that Travis doesn’t remember their lives together.  He escaped the burden.  Still it doesn’t seem to stop Wes from looking at him it was all falling into place.

Travis hit it off with him instantly.  It didn’t seem like it was overly long before they were stealing touches and breathing coded words of affection.  Both had girls that were elsewhere.  There had just been something about Wes that capture Travis, and Wes wasn’t complaining.  He lived off the subtle touches and affections.  It was more than enough especially when he seemed to love Travis in every life time.

It was great while it lasted.  Wes got caught in the crossfire of gang and the police.  Once again he didn’t know what happened to Travis.

\----  ----  ----

9

\--

In the ninth life, Wes was a woman named Wendy again.  She was training to be a nurse when World War II yanked America into the game.  It was only natural that she was shipped off overseas to help where she could.  She got sent to England to help the soldiers there, both English and American.  It isn’t horrible; for the most part she just tended to wounds and past out meals, sometime checking in on some of the local people.  For the most part though the hospital was a midway point for people to recover till they were sent home. 

Travis was an American soldier who had been shot in the chest two times and refused to die.  He said it was because he had to meet someone, and he always said it was Wendy, because only God would send down an angel like her.  Wendy would roll her eyes, and give him a whack or jolt of pain, to cover up how it took her back to their third lives.    Of course it never made him stop; it just seemed to encourage him.  Not to say he didn’t hit on all the nurses, he just hit on her the most.

Eventually he was discharged, but he didn’t go away.  Somehow he had talked a supervisor or something into letting him stay and work communications, since he was down but not really out.   If anything, Wendy knew it was an attempt to stay around and pester her.  After eight lives, she wasn’t so ready to swoon, they’re lives never seemed to end well.  However, he did win her over her cautions.

The war ended and they went back home.  Their relationship wasn’t overly accepted, but they still married.  Within a few months Wendy was with child.  A car accident took it all way a month before the baby was due.

\----  ----  ----

10

\--

Travis was a girl named Tracey again in their tenth life, and Wes met her when he was three and she was two.  Tracey’s mother was his family’s housemaid, and Wes’ mother didn’t see mind her bring over her daughter as long as work got done and things were in order.  So the two grew up together, but they weren’t really friends.  Well they were, but no on adult acknowledged it.

It didn’t matter to them, because they carried on.  Wes would teach her things he shouldn’t, and she wasn’t afraid to speak her young mind, or get into trouble.  Though, Tracey always managed to wiggle her way out of it by batting her eyelashes and being innocent.  That and Wes usually covered for them saying it was his idea or whatever.  It was all okay, but then his memories of his lives started coming through loud and clear.

The bulk of them all made Wes snap.  He told Tracey, everything one afternoon while they were walking back from school.  It all just came out.  Tracey told him he was weird and crazy, because that wasn’t how life worked.  Yet Wes swore up and down that he knew that’s how it worked, or it was how their lives worked at least.  Revolving around each other, meeting and dying with only Wes remembering.

They were arguing so much they didn’t see the car coming towards them.

\----  ----  ----

The eleventh life they were in now was the longest Wes could ever remember either of them living.  So far everything seemed okay. Running around with Travis by his side catching criminals was all the exact opposite of their life in the West, but Wes doesn’t mind.   The life has had its hardships, his family, the divorce, deaths of people he cared about, therapy.  Nothing Wes couldn’t handle, but Wes is just waiting for the shoe to drop.  He knows at some point it will all come crashing down again, and he’ll come too in another life.  But till then all he can do is just wait, wonder, and dread.

But then, Sutton will hand them a case or they’ll find a lead, and for a moment he can loss himself in the moment.  He can run with Travis to solve it and get catch the bad guy, and it’s okay. 

It doesn’t matter if Wes is burden with the weight of ten lifetimes.  Just as long as Travis smiles and gets a déjà vu moment every once in a while.

 


End file.
